LYNNFIELD — The Lynnfield baseball team was right in the game for the first few innings against visiting Haverhill, but the Pioneers couldn’t string together enough hits or throw enough strikes to pull out the victory in a 10-3 loss Tuesday afternoon at Lynnfield High School.
“At the end of the day, it comes down to throwing strikes, and we just weren’t able to do that (Tuesday),” said Lynnfield coach John O’Brien. “When our guys are getting their pitch counts up that high so early, you just can’t come back from that. And then on the other side their guy is pounding the strike zone and we’re taking too many first-pitch strikes. We had a few nice hits out there and a few bright spots, but we weren’t able to string it together.”
Tyler Scoppettuolo led the offensive charge for Lynnfield, going 2-for-3 with a home run and one RBI. Brady Cataldo went 1-for-3 with a double and one RBI, while Alex Gentile went 2-for-4. Henry Caulfield (1-for-3) and David Tracy (1-for-4) each had a double in the losing effort, while Spencer Riley went 1-for-3 with a walk.
On the mound, Dan Dorman got the start and took the brunt of Haverhill’s firepower. Dorman went 2 2/3 innings and allowed eight runs on seven hits, but it was the five walks and two hit batters that raised his pitch count too much for him to stay in the game. He also finished with three strikeouts.
Robert Higdon and Ben Mullin each pitched two-plus innings in relief, with Higdon allowing two runs on two hits with three strikeouts and Mullin allowing no runs on no hits with one strikeout.
The game was a back-and-forth affair to start, with Haverhill grabbing two early runs in the top of the first before Lynnfield answered back in the bottom of the second.
It started with a deep solo homer from Scoppettuolo, who took a 1-1 pitch over the left-centerfield fence to make it a 2-1 game. Caulfield followed with a double, then Cataldo brought him home with a ground-rule double of his own to tie the score. Two batters later, a wild pitch brought Cataldo home to give Lynnfield a 3-2 lead.
But that lead wouldn’t last long, and it was the only one the Pioneers would have.
A single and a hit batter in the top of the third put two runners on for Haverhill’s Andreas Burgess, who ripped an RBI single into right field that ended up scoring two runs after the throw went to second base. A catcher’s interference call with the bases loaded brought home another run to make it 5-3; then Braedon Smith’s RBI walk and Zach Hurrell’s two-run single blew the game open and made it 8-3.
The Pioneers were only able to scatter four hits over the final four innings, as Haverhill pitcher Shawn Joubert got into a groove and worked his way through the order to earn the complete-game victory.
Lynnfield (0-2) hosts Wakefield Saturday morning (10), where O’Brien will take on one of his former players in Wakefield head coach and Lynnfield native Kevin Canty.
“He was my first centerfielder when I took over here, and his two brothers also played for me,” said O’Brien. “It’ll be great to see him and it’ll be great to go up against those guys, because he’s been doing a great job over there and they have a really solid team.”
As for the play on the field, O’Brien knows his team will have to be ready to go on Saturday against the tough Middlesex League opponent.
“The Middlesex League is a real quality league, and Wakefield has been one of the best teams in that league for several years now,” said O’Brien, who coached in the Middlesex League at the helm of Winchester for many years. “We’re going to get back to work in practice this week, work on some things and hopefully come out ready to go for a Saturday morning baseball game.”
